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Sunday, 5 July 2015

Coming Soon - "Famous Animals"

For those of you who haven’t heard, I have a new book coming
out soon...in the next month or so anyway. Sorry, it’s not the sequel to Treespeaker (that’s still all inside my
head), or even Larkspell, which has been patiently waiting to be finished for so
long. No, this is a children’s book. Well, no, it isn’t really. It’s a history
book. Well, no. it’s not really that either. It’s a book about animals. Er, well…it
has pictures of animals. Sort of.

The above indecision about what the book actually is
explains why I haven’t sent it to a ‘real’ publisher to try to get them to
publish it. I just couldn’t think how to do it. How does one pitch a book that
doesn’t fit anywhere? I couldn’t even tell you if it’s fiction or non-fiction.
Librarians are just going to love it!

It all started with the 52-Week Illustration Challenge at
the beginning of the year. The theme for the week was ‘Italy’. To me Italy
screamed opera, so I decided to draw Pavarotti. However, I don’t really often
manage to draw someone who actually looks like they’re supposed to. I prefer
animals. Eventually, I hit on the idea of drawing a rat and calling him ‘Pavaratti’.
When I’d finished, I realised that I could think of a whole lot of people whose
names could be turned into animals. So I set to work and painted them. Soon I
found I was thoroughly enjoying myself and making those I showed them to laugh. With the help of friends on the Kindle Users Forum, I made a long list of possible subjects. A book was born. “Famous Animals.” Not a very catchy title I suppose, but I
wanted it to appear serious… but not.

In my dreams, the book would be a large coffee table book
with just the high resolution pictures to keep adults and children alike
amused. In reality, I can’t afford to print something like that without the
cost to the customer being astronomical. Hence the confusion about what sort of
book it is. Apart from each picture, there will be a short, hopefully witty
comment about the animal persona, a short biography of the real person on whom
they’re based and an interesting fact about the animal. So for Pavaratti, there
will be something about Pavaratti, something about Pavarotti and something
about rats.

Before I get it to the book launch which someone has kindly
offered, there’ll be a series of adverts and hopefully a blog tour (thought
that may come after). So expect to hear and see more of this in coming weeks.
If I start to bore you, let me know?

By the way, I already have enough ideas for Famous Animals Volume 2 (Musicians), Volume 3 (Artists) and Volume 4 (Entertainers), so this could go on forever!

Trees Are Not Lollipops

This is my motto, first heard when I was five years old and asked to draw a tree. Our teacher looked at all the drawings we'd done and said, "They're lovely, but remember trees are not lollipops". She made us look at trees more closely and see what they really looked like. It helped me with my drawings, but now I apply it to everything. I don't accept what other people say about something or someone until I've looked carefully for myself.